Applicant is the owner of U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,253,388 and 7,931,366 The invention disclosed and claimed in the '388 patent involved eyewear comprising a pair of lenses, releasable connectors connecting the respective inner ends of the lenses, a pair of temple pieces pivotable to respective outer ends of the lenses and a rigid strap attached to rear ends of the temple pieces including an arc-shaped based bridging the parallel legs. The strap was taught to be positioned below the lenses so as not to interfere with, for example, the hairdo of a user or helmet or hat worn by a user. The inner ends of the lenses were taught to be releasably secured to each other by connectors, preferably, magnets. To position the eyewear, the lenses are first separated from each other and pivoted outwardly. The strap is then wrapped around the back of a user's head and the lenses pivoted toward each other and secured together in front of the user's eyes. The lenses were taught to be instantly separable to facilitate putting on and taking off the eyewear and instantly connectable for a secure and accurate fit.
Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 7,931,366 represented an improvement over its '388 patent by calling for a telescoping segment located within the arc-shaped base of the eyewear's strap to selectively alter the length of the arc-shaped base for modifying the spacing between the substantially parallel legs of the rigid strap to adjust the strap to varying widths of a user's head. Although doing so greatly expanded the flexibility of applicant's eyewear enabling it to be accommodated by user's of different head size, it was determined by applicant that its eyewear could benefit yet further by additional modification.
It is noted that the arc-shaped base of applicant's eyewear is springy enough to be bendable when flexed and rebounding when released, yet tends to maintain its configured orientation thus requiring the user to adapt to the eyewear rather than enabling the eyewear to adapt to the user For example, if the hair style of the user was configured so as to interfere with the eyewear's arc-shaped base, the eyewear could fail to conform to the user's needs. This could cause the releasable connectors to snap apart and resist joinder thus making the eyewear difficult if not impossible to employ. In addition, some users may have head shapes which are out of the ordinary again causing the arc-shaped rigid strap to cause the eyewear to be ill-fitting.
It is thus an object of the present invention is to provide eyewear having a rigid strap which is capable of changing its orientation to accommodate the needs of the diverse users.
These and further objects will be more readily apparent when considering the following disclosure of amended claims.